T&T se­nior women’s vol­ley­baller Des­tiny De Leon and her Aguas­calientes Gi­ants were beat­en in their first two match­es of the Pro­fes­sion­al Vol­ley­ball League (LVP MX) at the Po­lifórum De­porti­vo y Cul­tur­al More­los in Mex­i­co.

This af­ter Gi­gantes de Aguas­calientes went un­der to Coro­nelas de Du­ran­go 15-25, 18-25, 26-24, 20-25.

De­spite the un­con­di­tion­al sup­port of the lo­cal fans, the Aguas­calientes play­ers showed a lack of con­cen­tra­tion at the be­gin­ning of the match, and their lack of rhythm was tak­en ad­van­tage of by the Du­ran­go squad to win the first set.

In the sec­ond quar­ter, Du­ran­go kept the pres­sure on with con­sec­u­tive streaks of points. Al­though the en­try of Brazil­ian Bruna Oliveira in­ject­ed en­cour­age­ment and dy­namism in­to the Gi­ants team, it was not enough to re­verse the score, leav­ing the ad­van­tage for the vis­i­tor.

The third set showed the best ver­sion of the lo­cals. Thanks to the tac­ti­cal in­tel­li­gence of Colom­bia’s Ang­ie Ve­lasquez and T&T’s León’s dom­i­nance at the net with key blocks, the Gi­ants man­aged to cut dis­tances by win­ning the set.

In the fourth set, coach Re­na­to Soares opt­ed for the re­turn of mid­dle block­er Mayra San­tacruz, who stood out with blocks and as­sists.

How­ev­er, the strate­gic ad­just­ments of Du­ran­go’s tech­ni­cal di­rec­tion at the end of the du­el sealed the de­fin­i­tive vic­to­ry for the Coro­nelas.

A day ear­li­er when both clubs met in their sea­son open­er, debu­tants Coro­nelas de Du­ran­go al­so emerged with a four-set win, 23-25, 25-20, 25-23, 25-15.

Each club will have ten match­es (five at home and five away), with a reg­u­lar sea­son end­ing on March 22.

At the end of the home-and-away league, the four best teams will ad­vance to the semi­fi­nals ahead of the fi­nal, which will both be con­test­ed via best-of-three se­ries.

A mem­ber of the tri­umphant T&T na­tion­al women’s team at last year’s Se­nior Caribbean Zon­al Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CA­ZO­VA) Cham­pi­onship in Ja­maica, Leon is the first T&T women’s play­er to ply her trade in the LMVF af­ter a suc­cess­ful col­le­giate ca­reer at Mar­shall Uni­ver­si­ty.

It is the sec­ond pro­fes­sion­al club out­ing for Leon, who had a stint with Is­rael’s Hapoel Ironi Kiry­at from 2022/2023 to 2023/2024.

Gi­gantes de Aguas­calientes will trav­el to Ira­pu­a­to to face Fre­seras in what will be the sec­ond se­ries of this in­au­gur­al cam­paign of the LVP MX.